Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle control apparatus equipped with an automatic brake control unit for carrying out an automatic brake control process that causes a braking force to be generated automatically in the wheels without reliance on a braking operation when the vehicle is involved in a collision.
Description of the Related Art
As a first conventional technology, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2012-001091, a technical concept is disclosed in which, when an airbag is deployed upon the occurrence of a vehicle collision, a predetermined braking force, which is set beforehand, is generated automatically in the wheels to thereby stop the vehicle.
Further, as a second conventional technology, in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2009-532790 (PCT), a technical concept is disclosed in which, by stopping an automatic brake control process based on operation of an accelerator pedal after a predetermined dead time has elapsed since the occurrence of a vehicle collision, stopping of the automatic brake control process due to an erroneous operation of the accelerator pedal at the time of a vehicle collision can be avoided.
Furthermore, as a third conventional technology, in the aforementioned Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2012-001091, a brake control device is disclosed in which the control time of automatic braking is made variable based on the vehicle velocity after a collision. The brake control device is equipped with a collision detecting sensor for detecting a collision of the driver's own vehicle, and a vehicle velocity sensor for detecting the velocity of the driver's own vehicle. In the case that a collision of the driver's own vehicle is detected by the collision detecting sensor, a brake driving force control unit actuates the brake control device, to thereby control an automatic braking time at the time that the braking force is generated automatically, based on the vehicle velocity that is detected by the vehicle velocity sensor after a collision has been detected.